Page:Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances.djvu/175

Rh the moonlit air, and floated down the valley as if journeying outward to some mysterious bourn. On the dim horizon stood the domes of the forest trees, marking the limits of the valley the boundary of his life. He pressed his hot head against the cold casement and groaned aloud, seeming to himself, in his tumultuous state, the only thing that did not belong to the calm and holy beauty of the scene. Disturbed by the sound, an old monk sleeping a few feet distant turned in his cell and prayed aloud:

"Seigneur! Seigneur! Oubliez lafaiblesse de majeunesse! Vive Jesus! Vive sa Croix!"

The prayer smote him like a warning. Conscience was still torturing this old man—torturing him even in his dreams on account of the sinful fevers that had burned up within him half a century ago. On the very verge of the grave he was uplifting his hands to implore forgiveness for the errors of his youth. Ah! and those other graves in the quiet cemetery garth below—the white-cowled dust of his brethren, mouldering till the resurrection morn. They, too, had been sorely tempted had struggled and prevailed, and now reigned as saints in heaven, whence they looked sorrowfully and reproachfully down upon him, and upon their sinful heaps of mortal dust, which had so foiled the immortal spirit.

Miserably, piteously, he wrestled with himself. Even conscience was divided in twain and fought madly on both sides. His whole training had left him obedient to ideas of duty. To be told what to do always had been for him to do it. But hitherto his teachers had been the fathers. Lately two others had appeared—a man and a woman of the world, who had spoken of life